This invention relates to a formation of colored pattern on a woven fabric and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for recognizing such a colored pattern.
In a conventional colored pattern forming system a preselected design of colored pattern is scanned for recognizing colors contained in individual picture elements. The recognized color informations are then coded into a predetermined format for use in the pattern forming system as a pattern information. For such a color recognizing operation it is desired to achieve an improved color recognizing ability and an increased speed of operation.
According to the above-mentioned conventional method, a design of colored pattern attached around the drum surface is first divided into a number of picture elements having an area predetermined by, for example, the weaving plan and the color of each picture element is separated by use of optical filters into three primary colors-red, green and blue. These primary colors are then converted into corresponding digital values which form the color informations of each picture element. These digital values, or color informations, are now compared with the previously memorized reference digital values of the three primary colors contained in the preselected colored pattern, so that the individual color information can be regarded to indicate a primary color having a closest reference digital value.
A disadvantage involved in the foregoing conventional method is that it cannot be effected very rapidly because of its including the step of comparing the digital values. Another disadvantage is that, to attain an improved accuracy in the color recognition of each picture element, it necessarily requires a memory medium of increased capacity for handling an additional number of color informations coming from the areas immediately before and after the particular picture element to be recognized, therefore the increased information quantity resulting in the reduction in the processing speed so much. This latter disadvantage seems to be caused, basically, by the fact that the color informations are limited only to the three primary colors (red, green and blue) and, theoretically, resulted from adoption of such a color reproduction method wherein the actual colors of individual picture elements are regarded as one of the three primary colors, which are then composed into a colored pattern corresponding to the preselected original colored pattern.